Archive for October, 2010

Friday, October 29th, 2010

In an op-ed published in Ha’aretz, Avner Cohen, author of The Worst-Kept Secret, remembers Israel Dostrovsky, one of the key figures in the development of Israel’s nuclear program, who recently passed away.

Cohen views Dostrovsky, who played various roles in Israel’s defense program from the very beginning, as embodying “Ben-Gurion’s ideal of a Zionist scientist—a researcher who divided his time between science and security.” He helped to get Israel’s nuclear program off the ground in the 1950s and later stepped in to organize the various components of the Dimona program. Cohen writes, “The principles of caution and internal review that [Dostrovsky] established are still, to this day, fundamental elements in the way Israel conducts itself in this realm.”

Cohen concludes the piece by describing his conversations with Dostrovsky about contemporary Israel and the possibility of a nuclear Iran:

It was the lucidity of his thought in particular that intensified the strong sense of sadness, almost depression, that I felt upon hearing his words. He was anxious about the country’s future and fate. At the base of his anxiety was the feeling that it had lost its compass, that it was moving toward self-ruin. It was saddening to realize that someone who had devoted so much of his life to ensure the physical existence of the Zionist homeland seemed to be losing his faith in and assurance of the Zionist project.

We spoke also about Iran’s nuclear plans. Once again, he expressed a deep pessimism. He thought it was very likely that Iran already had a bomb in the basement; at all events, he was convinced Iran could well have had enough fissile material for the preparation of a bomb or two. He also believed that one should treat with gravity the possibility that Iran would use a bomb to destroy the Zionist enterprise. I was amazed to realize just how little faith the person who built Israel’s existential deterrence had in its actual value as a means for preventing destruction.

I couldn’t help but ponder what the true legacy was of this son of giants.

Friday, October 29th, 2010

To showcase the richness of university press publishing, every so often we like to highlight interesting and provocative items from other university press blogs. Apologies for those we did not include in this installment (see the blog roll for other press blogs).

Here’s an excerpt from her appearance:

Now, the problem is that the immigration agents are not always accurate in their arrest reports…. The purpose of an immigration hearing is to review whether or not the claims that are being made in the arrest reports are accurate. But instead, the Department of Homeland Security is taking advantage of the discretion afforded them under our law and deporting people through a process that does not require them to appear before an immigration judge…. The vast majority of the immigration judges who review these do not review them carefully, and they just sign these orders by the hundreds. And as Rachel Rosenbloom, a colleague of mine at Northeastern Law School, points out, they are likely also ordering the deportation of US citizens among them.

Marshall Poe from “New Books in History” writes about the book:

In Fleming’s excellent telling, the story is entertaining though a bit sad. It’s sadder still that the weather-controlling con is still being run by seemingly well-intentioned people who claim they can “fix” global warming by means of some outsized, outrageous, and out-of-this-world engineering scheme. Fleming, who both knows the science and has looked at the history, is more than dubious. The only way we can “fix” the sky is to leave it alone and hope for the best.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has also posted a video of Fleming’s recent talk on geoengineering. Fleming critiques recent proposals aimed at “fixing the sky” to help reduce global warming. While such proposals differ from the military uses of geoengineering considered during the Cold War and the Vietnam War, the implications are still troubling.

From the AAAS site:

Fleming said today’s proponents of geoengineering for climate control need to look beyond the technical details of proposals. He argues, as he put it in his book, for “the relevance of history, the foolishness of quick fixes, and the need to follow a ‘middle course’ of expedited moderation in aerial matters, seeking neither to control the sky nor to diminish the importance of the environmental problems we face.”

Three of those artists who she writes about in Graphic Women she also mentions in an interview with FiveBooks. More specifically among the five books she cites as some of the best graphic narratives, she recommends Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, and Love That Bunch, by Aline Kominsky-Crumb.

Here’s an excerpt in which she discusses Alison Bechdel’s meticulous redrawing of family documents by hand to re-present the author’s past.

When comics are interesting, they’re a hand-made form. That’s the connection between comics and autobiography. On every page of the comic you have an index of the body of the person making it. I think redrawing all these documents gives her a way of going back into her family history and marking it with her own body. It’s an amazing act of self-possession – taking control of the archives, making a shadow archive, mimicking. It’s very much about being a child – what it’s like being a child relating to parents.

Tuesday, October 26th at 6:30 pm: Jonathan Soffer will be joined by Ed Koch at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to discuss Soffer’s new book Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City. (108 Orchard Street, New York, NY)

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

To showcase the richness of university press publishing, every so often we like to highlight interesting and provocative items from other university press blogs. Apologies for those we did not include in this installment (see the blog roll for other press blogs).

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This book is the result of decades of teaching many hundreds of undergraduates, and also of learning from them, especially from their questions, doubts and demands to explain what is really important.

Why Study the History of Political Thought? Three concrete reasons can be named, each reinforcing the other. All are relevant to students of political history, both those in University courses and to the person who wants to understand contemporary political movements such as the American tea party.

1) The first is the fall of the Berlin Wall. The decade leading up to the end of the Cold War was marked by a remarkable period of activity by “civil society” that helped to undermine the totalitarian state. Many observers expected that this momentous event would signal the birth of new forms of democracy arising from the anti-totalitarian opposition. Personally, I expressed my optimism in books and articles (culminating in The Specter of Democracy, 2002) that these movements of civil society would also affect western perceptions of politics. But rather than a new conception of democratic politics, a new form of antipolitics has replaced the old Cold War with an irenic vision of a globalized economic capitalism.

Monday, October 18th, 2010

In the interview, Soffer talks about how Koch managed the city during a time of severe budget constraints and presidential administrations (Carter and Reagan) that were largely hostile to urban America. Despite his critiques of Koch’s administration, Soffer argues that Koch set up a lot of the structures and policies that allowed New York City to prosper in the 1990s. Koch rebuilt financial confidence in New York City, rehabilitated some of the housing in the worst areas of the city, and put into place a 10-year housing project that continues to have an impact.

* Jonathan Soffer will be in conversation with Ed Koch tonight at 8:15 at the 92nd Street Y.

For Hess, the Dell case once again,

illustrates the perverse short-term view prevalent on Wall Street that dictates that growth must occur continuously, smoothly and linearly every quarter….There is no empirical basis in any science or in business reality for that “rule.” In fact, companies that grow for more than four consecutive years without resorting to earnings games are the exception, not the rule.

This emphasis on growth and quarterly earnings is what drives bad corporate behavior. Will the $4 million fine levied against Michael Dell deter others from doing the same as some observers have suggested? Hess thinks not. Given the amount the Michael has Dell earned, which is estimated at $450 million, $4 million or 1% of his earnings might not be an effective deterrent. Hess writes:

How effective is the risk of a 1% fine in deterring CEOs from creating non-authentic earnings to keep their companies healthy in Wall Street’s eyes? In my opinion, not very effective at all. In fact, compare the fine Michael Dell received to the income he earned based on stock options gains, and it would seem there is actually an upside for a CEO to play earnings games in order to make their businesses look good to Wall Street.

Bronner praises Avner Cohen for his analysis of Israel’s nuclear program as well for the ways in which it affects Israel society. Cohen, who supported Israel’s decision to develop a bomb as well as its policy of not admitting to having nuclear weapons, now views it is a hindrance. Bronner writes:

Mr. Cohen delves deeply into the Israeli psyche as he analyzes — and debates — the reign of nuclear ambiguity. He argues that the bomb represents for the Jewish people the link between shoah and tekumah, that is between the Nazi holocaust and national revival through the creation of the State of Israel. Nuclear weapons are the embodiment of “never again,” Israel’s unofficial motto.

Mr. Cohen views the development of the bomb as wise and considers the early years of opacity successful. But he says it’s time for a new policy. The current level of secrecy is a betrayal of Israel’s democratic values, he argues, and in a world faced with Iran’s profession of peaceful purpose for its nuclear program, Israel’s honesty and reliability should not be open to question.